Volunteerism
Rise to the TASK
Rise Community Services and the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (TASK) work with a couple Hightstown churches to provide weekly community dinners to patrons regardless of income level. My early years included helping set up tables, chairs and other items; unload food from delivery van; clean tables, put away tables and chairs, dry-mop, take out trash or recycling; design print materials as needed for announcements, information, etc. More recently, I deliver extra meals to people in need throughout the community.
New Jersey Envirothon
The NJ Envirothon is a hands-on environmental problem solving competition for high school students. In early 2014, I was asked to assist the volunteers transition to a new website. What I thought would be a brief meeting and some light assistance turned into several meetings with their dedicated volunteers and a completely redesigned website. I added my own custom coded HTML/PHP forms to greatly improve their registration process. I continue to help them maintain their website to this day. We conducted the competition virtually in 2021 and 2022.
East Windsor Senior Center
Assist seniors with their Android smartphones during one-on-one half-hour appointments.
New Jersey Agricultural Society
Farmers Against Hunger (FAH) is a program of the NJ Agricultural Society (NJAS) that maintains relationships with farms all over New Jersey as well as food banks & pantries, soup kitchens and a pool of volunteer "gleaners." When a farm has crops it plans to donate, FAH coordinates a small group of volunteers to glean the excess crops which are trucked by FAH to food banks, food pantries, soup kitchens and other organizations around the state. In addition to picking a large variety of fruits & vegetables I have: assisted loading/unloading pallets of produce; navigate & assist delivery of topsoil & garden supplies to schools around NJ as part of their Learning Through Gardening Program; stuffing envelopes for mass mailings; assist driver to or from the truck repair shop in Hightstown.
Res-Q-Pets
Clean and replenish cat cages and adoption room, socialize with each cat at the PetSmart in Hamilton Marketplace.
Methodist Madness
Assist coaches during a 5‑week summer basketball camp for local area kids at the First United Methodist Church of Hightstown. Help out with set up, clean up, graphic/print material, etc.
Professional Experience
NJ Association of Conservation Districts
Design new website with ongoing updates; establish email @njacd.org; consolidate domain & hosting resources; custom code online poster contest; other technology assistance as needed. Due to pandemic situation, a total redesign has been temporarily shelved. The older design elements were wrapped around all new, modern, secure, up-to-date infrastructure.
Camden County Soil Conservation District
Design and maintain new website to replace older, outdated website. Heavily customized responsive design template with some custom programming. Design new logo.
Firman E. Bear Chapter SWCS
https://firmanbear.weebly.com/
Design new website.
Burlington County Soil Conservation District
Design new website.
Giamarese Farm & Orchards
My first day was less than a week before the start of the farm's Fall Weekday Educational Tours and a few weeks before the start of their busy fall harvest weekends. With only a few hours training, minimal resources and a non functioning website, I set up a brand new website which was live by my third day. Within weeks, I introduced a moderate amount of automation & accuracy to their mostly manual and error prone School Tour reservation process. By mid October, reservations were largely automated. Subsequent responsibilities and achievements include:
- Upgrade basic AT&T GoPhone to Google Voice/Project Fi on Android mobile phone, tablet and Windows 10 laptop.
- Sync documents with Windows OneDrive, Google Drive and other online platforms.
- Develop, maintain and improve online database for the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program and Fall Educational Tours. Maintain Weekday Fall Educational Tour calendar and process tour reservation requests.
- Assess existing technology and implement new technology to improve interaction with customers & staff; improve efficiency of working for the farm remotely. Maintain website, domain name, hosting.
- Streamline efficiency, security and liability of CSA member sign up with online sign up & custom coded PayPal buttons.
- Maintain & sync account logins (usernames & passwords) with cloud-synced password manager.
- Maintain relations with weekly CSA members in person and through email and our MailChimp newsletter.
- Customer service for customers via phone, voicemail, text message, email, social media, MailChimp newsletter.
- Quality photography for website, social media, newsletter and other marketing needs.
- Graphic design for coupons, print materials. Advertising and various social media platforms.
Technical Skills
Web Development & Programming
- Hand-typed HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript
- Regular Expressions, PHP, .htaccess, Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0
- Domain name registration & hosting; Weebly Website Builder with custom coding
- Zoho Creator database design with custom programming
- PayPal Buttons, PayPal Here, Square Payments
Google Office Suite, Apps & Products
- Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings
- Gmail, Calendar, Photos, Keep
- Google Voice, Hangouts, Project Fi, Android Phone & Tablet Interface
Microsoft Office
- OneDrive, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint
- Excel - Formatting, conditional formatting, formulas, macros (Visual Basic), other advanced features
Social Media & Communications
- Twitter; Pinterest; Flickr; Facebook business pages and advertising; MailChimp Email Newsletters
Education
The College of New Jersey
Ewing, NJ
1999 - 2002
Bachelor's Degree in Graphic Design
Mercer County Community College
West Windsor, NJ
1996 - 1999
Associate's Degree in Advertising